Random blog posts about research in political communication, how people learn or don't learn from the media, why it all matters -- plus other stuff that interests me. It's my blog, after all. I can do what I want.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Associations

As we all know from Bowling Alone and work on social capital, belonging to organizations and associations is important to our psychological well being. So how do Georgia counties stack up on this? It turns out that 2015 health data answers just this question. I extracted the data on "social associations" and ranked the counties from worst to first in parentheses the number of associations per 10,000 residents.

So what can we take from this? Bigger counties, like DeKalb or Fulton that dominate the greater Atlanta metroplex, aren't among the highest. Fulton, for example, is ranked 108th out of 159 counties, DeKalb is 135th. Clarke County, where I live, is ranked 98th. Other nearby counties are Oconee (32nd), Jackson (100th), and Oglethorpe (81st). One takeaway is the vast difference, 10-fold, between the top county, at 20.7 associations per 10,000 people, and the last place county, at 2.3. Maybe people in Lumpkin and Clayton counties just don't like one another.

If I took the time to map it out we might see more geographic trends. Or we might not. The top Georgia county is over near Savannah, the second and third place counties in the mountains. A retiree effect? That's a hypothesis worth testing.